Cooking and Food Tips

I got to thinking the other day about the way I cook, and how it’s different from most folks. I taught myself to cook, with a lot of help. I have learned little tips and tricks over the years, and I thought it was time to share some more of my hard-won food expertise.

Limes - Keep fresh limes on hand. They make nearly everything taste better. Add juice to mayo to make it taste like home made and it is much safer.

Fruit salad - make a great dressing of sour cream, fresh lime juice, sugar to taste, leaving the dressing slightly tart. Wonderful on fresh fruit but also a mixture of canned, drained, pineapple, oranges etc.

Tartar Sauce- better than bought: Mix mayo, a little grated onion, and drained capers.

Horseradish Sauce - add a tiny bit of grated horseradish, a drop or two of lemon or lime juice, and a sprinkle of salt to sour cream. Taste carefully and adjust strength. I sometimes add a dash of Tobasco. This is so good with beef.

Dessert - Mother’s quick, showy dessert: Buy a round, angel food cake with the hole in the center. Place it on a pretty platter and enlarge the hole a little .Buy three pints of different colored ice cream or sherbet. When the table is cleared for dessert, bring out dessert plates and place next to the hostess. In the kitchen, empty the 3 pints of ice cream into the center of the cake. Serve at the table with a pretty pie or cake server, placing some ice cream on top of each slice of cake then sending it around to the guests. Try pineapple, lime and orange sherbet or chocolate, vanilla, and butter pecan ice creams with Cool Whip etc. I’ve never understood why but people always ooh and ah over this………

OR serve vanilla ice cream with Crème de Menthe as a topping.

Salad - Here’s an easy salad: place sliced tomatoes, sliced cukes, baby carrots, and whatever you like on salad plates. Pass a bowl of homemade Ranch Dressing, you know the kind you buy in a package and mix with buttermilk and mayo. It really is better than the bottled kind and can be made ahead. [If, like me, raw veggies no longer agree with you, try the above dressing over steamed or poached veggies like broccoli etc, just for something different.]

Fantastic rolls - I used to fix these when my kids were still home and they are good. Use a can of bought biscuits and about half a stick of butter, melted in a round cake or pie pan. Dip each biscuit in the butter on both sides, then fold in the middle like a Parker House roll. Squeeze all the biscuits into the pan so that they touch, best if crowded. They will look like a pan of homemade yeast rolls. They are good with sesame or poppy seeds on the top too but not everyone likes the seeds. Just bake by the directions on the biscuit can.
** The above “rolls” are delicious at breakfast, served with two or three selections of fruit preserves and good, hot coffee.

In the fall, when local, fresh apples are plentiful, make applesauce. Peel and quarter the apples and poach in just enough water to cover. I like to add the juice of half a lemon or more, depending on the amount of apples. Gently simmer, uncovered, until they are soft enough to kind of squish up. They can have a few lumps. While the apples are hot, stir in enough sugar to give a good flavor. You can add whatever spices your family likes. We’ve used cinnamon, cloves etc. It is better not to drain the good juice from the apples so use as little water as possible and allow it to “cook down.” My parents made this and I made it for my family.

** The above applesauce can also be used to make fried pies. Use a rolling pin [or wine bottle] to roll out and flatten bought biscuits. Fill with about a tablespoon of fruit, and Fold in half, crimp the edges with the tines of a fork, place in a skillet of hot oil or Crisco. Cook til light brown on one side, turn and cook other side, drain on paper towels, and sprinkle with sugar if desired. I suppose you could use vegetable oil but Crisco is best. If you are in the mood to sin, use homemade pie pastry, or store bought piecrust dough, roll out on a floured board, and cut into circles with a large biscuit cutter. Other stewed fresh fruits or stewed dried fruits are traditional, as well, I believe.


A family favorite with my kids – and now my grands: Toast two or three slices of bread per person in the oven; remove baking sheet from oven. Place tomato slices on each piece of toast. Then add a slice of cheese. Next, add a slice of very lightly cooked bacon, cut in half. Run all this under the broiler just long enough to finish cooking the bacon and melt the cheese a little. Serve while hot.

Always leave the oven door slightly open when using the broiler.

For breakfast or a first course, halve and seed a grapefruit, sprinkle brown sugar on it, and run it under the broiler just long enough to melt the sugar. Don’t turn your back. A red cherry in the middle is nice too.

Speaking of grapefruit, a lovely salad is grapefruit sections alternated with sliced avocado, on a leaf or two of Boston lettuce. Dress with a mixture of olive oil, lime or lemon juice, and a dash of onion powder, and paprika.. It is a good idea to dip the avocado slices in the dressing before placing on the salad plates.

This recipe is in my cookbook but it is so easy and good, I will repeat it.
EASY GREEN BEAN SALAD: Drain 2 cans of DelMonte green beans. Place in bowl with 2 cukes, chunked or sliced, about half an onion, chopped, 1 heaping tbl.dill weed, and enough Ranch Dressing to moisten. Best if done ahead so flavors can blend. I don’t use DIET type anything. But bottled Ranch Dressing works OK in this salad.
Our kids love this so we make it often.

Every now and then, Dee will say that something she cooked is not as good as mine. I see two reasons for that. One is that, if your mother was a good cook, you’ll always remember her dishes fondly and kids are often just hungrier from playing hard etc. The other reason is one we are working on and experimenting with a bit. As I see it, it’s just a matter of seasoning. Dee is a fine cook and willing to try different dishes more than I did. Her children are good eaters but have a very different background in foods. So we mostly have just decided that though she often uses the same seasonings I used when she is making one of “my” recipes, she uses too little. When she asked how much dill weed to add to the green bean salad above, a tad tongue in cheek, I said, “Oh, about a handful.”

One of the first things I taught myself to cook and really worked on until I got it right, was light, fluffy biscuits, using only White Lily flour, of course. For the longest time, my husband complained that my biscuits didn’t taste like his mothers. Finally, that jackrabbit confessed that his mother’s biscuits were awful! She was a darling person but had always had a cook. She died two years after we married.

And finally…

My life has surely been very different from what I thought it would be when I was young. I have to say though that it has had plenty of joy and still does. The seemingly mundane parts of keeping house, cooking, and especially being a mother, have brought great joy to me. Now, I am having the icing on the cake with my grandchildren.